I guess it depends on what the code’s used for, how long it’s going to live for, is it ever going to be modified or maintained, who’s going to be doing that, and just what do you mean by good and bad anyway? :-)

If “bad” means incorrect but it’s well-documented, at least you’ve got a chance of fixing it. If “bad” means badly-designed, it might be another matter – great documentation doesn’t help much with a totally overblown or just muddleheaded design.

If “good” means “it seems to work” then it might not actually be working properly anyway, and lack of documentation might bely a lock of thought/design leading to such a situation. If “good” means “does exactly what we want, no question”, then it really depends on if it’s ever going to need to be changed, and how complex it is.

One of my favourite books is Brian Eno‘s A Year With Swollen Appendices, which is basically his diary for the year 1995 along with some essays from that time (the “swollen appendices”). I think I love this book so much because he’s living a kind of life I’d quite like to lead, but probably never will: this is my equivalent of reading “Hello” magazine or something. :-)

Anyway, I mention the book now because I’ve just come across the website of a great idea which I first came across in one of the appendices: The Long Now Foundation, whose aim is to promote long-term thinking in this age of increasingly short timeframes. Quote:

I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.

The band Locust (which is essentially a bloke called Mark van Hoen) have a new offical website, www.locustsound.com. Unfortunately it seems to be lacking active content at the moment (eg the discography is just a page of album/single cover pictures), so this unoffical site is still the best resource.

I have only one Locust album, Morning Light, but is does happen to be possibly my most favouritest album of all time ever, so I’ll be looking forward to the new one in November.

Hah – cool. Further to my post below, I’ve written a short python script to upload a template to a blog. Now I can maintain the Gimboland template using emacs on my local disk, rather than using Opera (which, whilst a great browser, sucks as a text editor). Expect a much more fluid look from now on. :-)

Gimboland is currently maintained using Blogger, which is a great tool. However, I feel like I’m starting to outgrow its capabilities, so I’m starting to think about creating a zope-based site (perhaps at gimbo.org.uk initially)… That’s not going to happen immediately, mind… :-)

OK, so Rebecca’s Pocket, which I discovered yesterday, is full of great stuff. I think this is definitely going to have to go in the sidebar. Here’s a quick sampling produced by a quick trawl this morning:

It takes years to accumulate the necessary abilities to produce a piece of architecture. You can do small work at a young age, but the technical aspects, the business aspects, the aesthetic aspects — all of this you’re juggling throughout your career, and trying to improve and mature. I tell my students: You may be able to start practicing two or three years after you graduate, but you’re not really going to be an architect until you’re 45. It’s just the nature of the beast. That’s probably true in medicine, law and all the professions – except the oldest one, of course.

For example the aikido technique Ikkyo was developed from a common kenjutsu technique dealing with two opponents, one attacking from the front and one from the rear, to avoid a downward cut from the front you would step into the attack slightly and simultaneously wheel to the side with a sharp hip movement throwing your arms into the crossing attack at the opponent behind you, letting the blade strike flesh and the original attacker miss you completely with their strike, from this position a second wheel and step back and a cut from the top right to the bottom left will cause the first attacker to drop into two neat seperate segments.

“Elite” was, of course, the greatest computer game ever created. So how about a reverse engineered version written in C? Fully operational, based on the original BBC assembley source, download the source, browse it, compile it – fantastic.

Well, did the banquet for my trek on Saturday night, and a great night was had by all, by all accounts. Being in charge I couldn’t really relax and enjoy it, but I guess I enjoyed it in my own way – and as time passes, I’m enjoying the evening more and more. :-)

The best bit of all, however, was when I asked Julie to marry me and she said yes – which was nice.